New Spendor SP200 speakers
- Thread starter Martyn Miles
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Martyn Miles
pfm Member
Spendor actually, but we all know what you mean...
The sound you want from your speakers is of course wholly up to you. Expensive home audio speakers offer an interesting range of sound including some that are fairly neutral in the manner of the better studio monitors.
Cost on the other hand is straightforward to compare. If we take the current SP100 which currently costs about £6.5k per pair without amplifiers and compare it with, say, a Neumann KH 420 which costs under £6k including power amplifiers the active speakers are clearly cheaper. This is quite typical and follows from how technical performance and cost are weighted differently by the two market sectors.
Would people seriously considering the purchase of Spendor SP100s consider the higher technical performance and lower cost Neumann speaker to be a better alternative? I would suggest not in almost all cases because this is not what is attracting people to Spendor speakers.
Martyn Miles
pfm Member
Interesting that you say that some of the better studio monitors are 'fairly neutral'.
A lot of music has been mastered on monitors that are far from neutral.
Both you and I know that studio and domestic speakers are quite different things...
A lot of music has been mastered on monitors that are far from neutral.
Both you and I know that studio and domestic speakers are quite different things...
In the sense that one is primarily a tool and one is primarily luxury goods then I would agree that shifts the relative importance of various component parts of the product. My suspicion is that neutral sound is possibly not particularly helpful when it comes to selling large luxury home speakers which is why things like large midranges crossing high to tweeters on flat baffles is fairly common to give an impression of detail. To agree with bownose, I would not be surprised if the strongest component of commercially successful expensive home speakers like Spendor and Harbeth is the marketing story they have to tell.
Concerning the costs of a DIY speaker equivalent of the new SP 200 here is a decent commercial kit costing £685 for the parts without wood of a pair of sealed 3 way speaker using a single 12" woofer. £1000 for another pair of 12" woofers, wood and some further refinement does not seem an unreasonable budget.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
It does look like a lovely speaker and the margin must be wholesome. The production investment compared with a B&W of a similar price will be much smaller. Good luck to them.
Jodet
pfm Member
I recommend anyone in the market for $25,000 speakers seek psychiatric care.
If I was a multi-millionaire I would almost certainly be in the market for $25k speakers although I wouldn't be in the market for $250k speakers.
kasperhauser
pfm Member
Seems it would be worth the price just to be able to walk into the listening room and say, "Hey big Spendor".
You don't think multi-millionaires keep score? There is no loss of points for being a chump and buying naff bling like bright yellow Wilson speakers for £250k rather than, say, $25k for quality such as a decent built in professional system? I rather thought they did and were even worse than we are if, to take a recent thread as an example, we saw someone pay a few hundred pounds for naff bling like a shiny mains cable. Perhaps I am wrong and they don't give toss.
Oh come on, please talk sense! The equivalent of the SP200...really?
Those drive units DO NOT compare to what Spendor use (I am very familiar with them), and you have spectacularly failed to address the extensive design that actually goes into perfecting some thin walled loudspeakers, the crossover design and development, the costs of those components, the labour element. Then as with all commercial products there's the mark up needed to just stay in business, distributors and dealers cuts. £6K these days for a really good pair of speakers for example is not out of the way at all.
It is very easy to say "here's a bunch of components that do a similar thing for XXXX grand less" but in reality just how do you know they sound the same? Your assumptions on this thread really do yourself no favours. You're an intelligent chap, so throwing in the first similarly sized 3 way budget DIY speaker and suggesting it could and does sound the same as a speaker you've never heard is just utter nonsense, especially when you seem have no experience of either.
Another argument against the active solution is that half these companies simply wont be supporting their active designs when they go south in say 15 to 20 years time, if not sooner, when active components drift out of spec or go wrong. As we all know, asking a professional (company or individual) to service any amplifier costs you £35 just to take the casework apart, then around £55 per hour wouldn't be unrealistic in today's climate, plus parts. Then there's the endless must-have software upgrades that many seem to require.
Active is a great idea but still has a way to go just as passive designs do. Both can and do sound stunning when done properly. At least passively they remain simple for the domestic user to DIY repair many years down the line and any suitable amp will drive them.
This thread seems for some just to be a Spendor bashing thread. Their marketing, distribution and mark-up models are possibly no different from just about every other manufacturer out there, so they're not doing anything really any differently (and indeed are not offering anywhere the same level of marketing BS or gloss) except producing a style of speaker that some personally don't care for. If that's the argument, fine, that's a personal choice but lets not become deluded into comparing their current flagship models with off the shelf budget DIY speakers as that is laughable.
Already having it and my speakers have never cropped up... $25K is a lot to spend of speakers I agree but its not mad, people spend much more on a car and $25K speakers ought to last you for life.
BTW Multi-millionaires can be some of the most tight-fisted s.o.b's on the planet...
Yes in terms of broadly equivalent technical performance. Speakers are low tech products that can be successfully designed and manufactured by hobbyist that have taken the time to gain the relevant knowledge. It requires a degree of competence that not all DIY speaker folk possess but a fair few do.
No in terms of a prestige product which requires more of what companies like Spendor provide.
As mentioned by someone earlier, the measurements of the SP100R2 in Stereophile show that it has a modest technical performance. Assuming the SP200 is going to be similar then a competent DIYer should be able to match it in terms of technical performance. Better in some respects and possibly worse in others but broadly equivalent. Some may like the sound more and some less.
They are not very... umm "sexy" are they? I know... I know... its all about the sound with you guys, but if you are spunking up megamoolah on something new you'd at least expect something a little more then a box with speakers for your 16 grand... Yeah, I know speakers are carefully selected and made by the phases of the planetary alignments, the magnets are blessed by monks, the veneers are harvested from a organic plantation fed by moon dew and the trees selected for each speaker over 100 years ago... and the capacitors and inductors are rolled on the thighs of nubian princesses, but still... I want magic or at least a little foreplay...
Martyn Miles
pfm Member
Spendor bashing ?
Not from me, or a few others thankfully.
I might be 'living in the past' ( with apologies to Jethro Tull ) with my BC1s, but I still admire Spendor and their products.
If I were in the market for expensive speakers, I'd give the SP200 a listen.
Don't knock it until you've tried it...
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
Boring is the new sexy. Understated is the new underwear. Tweed is the new leather. Teetotalism is the new hedonism.
